The AN agrees to investigate 10 former ETA leaders for the murder of PP councilor Pedrosa Urquiza in 2000

The magistrate will also investigate the possible responsibility of the defendants in the policy of forced expulsions in the Basque Country

The judge of the National Court Alejandro Abascal has agreed to investigate the alleged responsibility of 10 former leaders of the terrorist organization ETA in the murder on June 4, 2000 of the PP councilor in the Durango City Council (Vizcaya) Jesús María Pedrosa Urquiza as well as the possible responsibility of the defendants in the policy of forced expulsions in the Basque Country.

In an order from this same Monday, to which Europa Press has had access, the person in charge of the Central Court of Instruction Number 1 admits for processing the complaint filed last August by the Dignity and Justice Association, which explained that Pedrosa was "a of the numerous victims" of the "policy of forced expulsions from the Basque Country directed by the zuba -the highest leadership body of ETA-- under threat of death".

Therefore, the judge agrees to investigate for a crime of murder in connection with a consummated crime of coercion and terrorist threats to the leaders of the gang at the time of the events: Javier García Gaztelu, alias 'Txapote'; Ignacio Miguel Gracia Arregui, alias 'Iñaki de Rentería'; Juan Antonio Olarra, alias 'Juanvi'; Juan Carlos Iglesias Chouzas, 'Gadhafi'; Asier Oyarzabal, alias 'Baltza'; María Soledad Iparraguirre, 'Anboto'; Miguel Albisu Iriarte, 'Mikel Antza'; Vicente Goicoechea, aka 'Willy'; Ainhoa ​​Múgica, alias 'Olga' and Ramon Sagarzazu, alias 'Ramontxo'.

The magistrate endorses DyJ's complaint and explains that over the years the ETA executive committees have directed the policy of forced expulsions of different sectors of the non-nationalist Basque population, through coercion and threats that progressively expanded and individualized on the citizens who exercised democratic civic resistance against the gang.

It was in this context that the organization ended the life of Jesús María Pedrosa Urquiza in the town of Durango, when he was walking back to his home. An ETA member approached him from behind and shot him in the neck, killing him almost instantly. A second terrorist, also unidentified, picked up the perpetrator of the attack in a vehicle and both fled.

For the magistrate, the murder of Pedrosa is not only a terrorist murder. "It also supposes an amplification and a reinforcement of that terrorist threat, forming part of that continued and not punctual, indiscriminate and persistent strategy of terror, until the year 2011, and with that it not only ends the life of the specific person , in this case Mr. Pedrosa Urquiza, but rather that climate of threat created with the vocation of lasting over time is fed," he says.

In his car, Abascal explains that since the early 1980s, ETA had a hierarchy in which its leadership or executive committee assumed all management functions and, consequently, decision-making to carry out a terrorist action, applying the strategy designed by the executive committee, they were distributed to all the militants.

"The executive committee decides, coordinates, selects the objectives, sends the information, delivers the necessary material to attack, generically designates the objective and expressly orders the attack to be carried out," the instructor asserts.

In this regard, the investigator maintains that the threats that the councilor received before his death and his subsequent execution "evidence the insolvency and connection between the attempted expulsion and the murder that occurred, as the terrorist organization itself claimed." in ZUZEN 79 (against the politicians responsible for the crushing of Euskal Herria").

REQUEST REPORTS FROM THE CIVIL GUARD AND NATIONAL POLICE

For all this and to clarify the murder of the councilor, the magistrate agrees to carry out a series of proceedings to clarify the responsibility of the members of the ETA Executive Committee at the time of the murder of Jesús María Pedrosa.

Among them, it requests the Civil Guard and the National Police a report that includes the actions of threats, coercion and harassment committed against militants of constitutionalist political parties in the period of time immediately before, simultaneously and after the assassination of the councilor in June 2000. , "and it must be specifically evaluated whether, as a consequence of this intimidating climate, these people were able to leave the Basque Country".

The purpose of these proceedings, the magistrate details, is to determine the presumed participation of the former ETA leaders in the coercion, threats and subsequent murder, either as direct perpetrators or as those responsible for the crime committed by the terrorist organization in commission by omission.

THE COMPLAINT OF DIGNITY AND JUSTICE

It was last August when Dignity and Justice filed a 247-page complaint before the Central Investigating Court Number 1 of the National Court to request that it investigate not only the murder, one of the ETA crimes that remain unresolved, but also the alleged coercion and terrorist threats against Pedrosa Urquiza as part of "the broadest policy of forced expulsion of between 60,000 and 200,000" people from the Basque Country.

In it, the association assures that the "forced expulsion attempt" was inserted in "a long and very extensive policy that zuba to zuba had been perpetuating since the end of 1977" and that this was "determinant" in the murder of the councilor .

In this sense, DyJ defended that the member of the PP was "selectively assassinated" before his "unique civic and heroic resistance to flee Durango." For Dignity and Justice, the death of Pedrosa Urquiza was a "direct" consequence of his resistance to said expulsion policy and became a "monstrous instrumental crime, exemplary, lenitive, for others who might think of resisting." .

Within the framework of the complaint, Dignidad y Justicia relied on the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court, which contemplates "mediate authorship by domain of the organized apparatus of power", to demand that the National Court admit their petition and investigate the murder of the popular councillor.